


like some kind of clarity

by starblessed



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Love Letters, M/M, Secret Admirer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 20:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12755868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starblessed/pseuds/starblessed
Summary: Sometimes it’s better to let your friends do the hard jobs for you. Especially when you can’t write poetry to save your life, and desperately need to profess your love to a certain someone.Talbert entrusts Smokey with writing Shifty a love letter. It’s probably a mistake.





	like some kind of clarity

**Author's Note:**

> Of course, the characters in this fic are based off of their fictional portrayals from the miniseries Band of Brothers, and I mean no disrespect to the real-life veterans!
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [renelemaires](http://renelemaires.tumblr.com/)!

“You’re so gentle, but your hands are so rough… I feel like you could carry the world. Carry _me…_ anywhere I want to go…”

“Just stop,” Smokey says abruptly, wheeling around in his chair. Tab looks up, blinking in surprise. “Stop trying to dictate. You’re terrible. Everything you’re saying makes you sound like you’re trying to describe how you’re feeling after getting smacked in the head with a brick, so you’re going to stop now before you hurt yourself.”

Tab’s brows knit together. “Then how am I supposed to tell him what I think of him? That’s the whole point of this letter in the first place!”

“You are not going to tell him anything. You’re going to sit down and appreciate me while I tell him in the floweriest terms how hopelessly in love you are.”

"I’m not –” he starts, eyes widening. Smokey’s grin widens into something a bit more lacivious.

“Okay, how much you want to pin him against a wall and kiss him ‘til you can’t breathe.”

Formerly he was flushed, but now Tab’s face flares as red as a cherry. “That’s not the ultimate goal.”

“It’s up there, though.”

“It is, yeah.”

Tab pauses, considering. Smokey can hear the annoying little thing that his friend calls “a conscience” kicking in. If there’s anything annoying about Floyd Talbert, it’s his nobility. He’s got a sense of responsibility a mile wide, and he trips over it so often that it should be classified as a disability. “I don’t feel right about this. The whole point is to tell him how I feel, you know? This seems like cheating.”

Technically it _is_ cheating, but Smokey isn’t about to tell Tab that. He loves his friend to death, but the simple fact is: he doesn’t have a single poetic bone in his body. He tries, bless him, he really tries – but Smokey has read his attempts at love ballads. The less remembered about them, the better.

If he wants any chance at impressing his great love, Tab needs to turn towards outside assistance. That’s the whole reason he came to Smokey in the first place. Because Smokey happens to be the world’s best friend, he’s happy to oblige.

But damn it, he’s not letting Tab steer this plan straight into the ground.

“You trust me, right?” he demands. When Tab’s dumbfounded expression betrays surprise, he repeats himself. “You trust me not to steer you wrong.”

“Yeah, Smoke, of course I d–”

“Then _let me do this.”_

Smokey leans close, brandishing his letter in front of him like a loaded pistol. Tab draws back, in awe of it. He’s got every reason to be – Smokey’s prose couldn’t rival the great love poets, but he knows what he’s doing. He’s not about to let his friend down.

“I promise,” he replies, confidence exuding from his crooked grin, “this is all gonna go according to plan.”

* * *

 

Granted, the plan didn’t anticipate someone else getting their hands on the letter before it’s intended ever came close.

“Ooh, what’s this supposed to be?”

Curious fingers twitch along the crisp envelope’s spine, stopping just short of tearing into it. Smokey feels every muscle in his body tense at once. In the bed adjacent to him, he sees Tab do the same. His eyes are wide, lips pursed in a horror-stricken 'o’; but he, like Smokey, finds himself helpless to intervene. If they did, it would be more than obvious that they were the one who left the letter under the pillow in the first place.

Shifty Powers tears his attention from tying his boots to glance towards his best friend. “What?” he says; then, catching sight of the letter, his brows furrow. “Whatcha got there, Popeye?”

“Someone left a letter for you, Shifty!” Popeye exclaims, turning the envelope over in his palms. “Under the pillow too, like some sort of secret. You’ve got a lover I don’t know about?”

Shifty’s lips twitch, though bafflement is still plain on his face. “Unless that lover is Captain Sobel, I’m not sure how anybody else would get in here without us knowing.” He straightens up, peering over at the letter. Curiosity shines in his eyes as he scans over the nest scrawl of his name upon the outside of the envelope. “We would have seen anybody come in, I reckon.”

“They must have been awful out of place, slipping envelopes in peoples’ beds.”

Not quite, Smokey thinks. When you sleep just a few beds over, you can remain pretty inconspicuous even when sliding something underneath someone’s pillow. No one noticed Tab, at least, and he was careful to keep it that way. If Smokey hadn’t been watching like a hawk, he would never have realized what was going on.

He realizes that it’s important that he say something, however, before Shifty and Popeye bring the letter to one of the Lieutenants as contriband, or start worrying that someone’s been in their barracks. He turns over on his stomach, resting his chin in his hands, and allows a wide grin to curl across his face. “Looks like you’ve got a secret admirer, Shifty.”

Shifty’s eyes widen, and he ducks his head to hide his flaming cheeks. “I hardly think that,” he says through a chuckle, shaking his head down at the envelope. “No, that – that’s an absurd idea if I’ve ever heard one, I’m sure of it.” When he tears his gaze up again, he looks almost imploring. “Do you know who wrote this, Smokey?”

That desperate expression on Shifty’s face is enough to make Smokey’s heart of stone crack. Then he catches a glimpse of Tab’s glare (telling him in no uncertain terms that he’ll die if he says a word), and look at that, his moment of weakness has passed.

“Hmm, nope. Sorry buddy. No clue. Maybe they signed it inside.”

It’s an unsubtle prompt, but Shifty bites hook, line, and sinker. “Right!” he exhales, fingers automatically fumbling to get the envelope open.

He tears into the paper, and Smokey watches the change wash over his face. His cheeks flush; his eyes grow wider and wider as he reads. By the time he’s done he looks like a regular tomato, like he’s spent the day exposed to the relentless Virginia summer sun, almost ready to faint. Popeye, who’d been shamelessly reading over Shifty’s shoulder, places a hand on his back to steady him.

“Shifty,” Tab finally piped up – the first time he’s spoken at all. He looks startled, and more than a little concerned. “Are you okay?”

For an awful moment, Smokey is convinced his incredible prose broke his friend’s crush. Then Shifty speaks.

“I,” he says, and seems to choke on his tongue. “I…”

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again there’s a new resoluteness there. “I _need_ to find whoever wrote this letter.”

He tucks it back into the envelope with clumsy hands, mutters a few words to Popeye, and rushes off. Smokey blinks after him. One glance at Tab shows his bafflement, plain as the nose on his face. He gapes in his crush’s wake, open mouthed and awestruck, before his accusatory gaze rounds on Smokey.

 _What the hell did you write?_ he mouths. Smokey only shrugs, making a vague gesture for his friend to pipe down.

He’s not worried at all. Shifty won’t go far – after all, there’s only so many people who could have written the letter, and so many who’d be so bold. He doubts Shifty will be sharing its contents with anyone, but he also won’t be tossing it aside either.

After all, a line like _“I yearn to lick the salt from your sun-ripened canvas of your skin,”_ is hard to ignore. Yep, Smokey thinks, sooner or later Shifty’s quest will lead him back to his secret admirer.

In the meantime, all Smokey has to do is sit back and watch his handiwork play out. His friends should really come to him for help more often.


End file.
